Gender Differences In Sexual Intention Perception

Sexual intention perception is an assessment of other's intention of pursuing some kinds of sexual activity. It plays an important role in sex life. Because men and women were facing different selection pressure, different psychological mechanisms are designed for solving fitness problems that repeatedly appeared in evolutionary history, such as sexual intention perception. According to Eorre Management Theory, sexual overpercetion bias is useful for male to avoid miss the opportunity of reproduction, but for female, this overperception may lead them in danger of pregnant with out father investment. There were many studies in this area in west countries, but not in china. This research is aimed to find out if gender differences in sexual intention perception exist cross-culturally in china by combination of three methods.My hypothesis are:a. male possess sexual overperception bias, not female; b. when targets are brothers and sisters, the estimate of their sexual intention will lower than estimate of other male and female; in automatic association level, male, compare to female, have more sexual associations with female and self; d. compare to other female and male, men and women tend to less associate sister and brother with sexual in automatic level.To verify the above assumptions, I used three self-report questionnaires to investigated natural occurring events about misunderstood of sexual intention and friendship by the opposite sex; perceptions of different targets' sexual intention according to dating behaviors; rate of siblings', others', self's sexual intention in specific circumstances. The Implicit Association Tests were used to exam the automatic level of associate different target with sex and friendship. The results show that in real life, women's friendship are more likely been misunderstood as sexual intention by opposite sex than men; men's sexual intention are more likely been misunderstood as friendship than women. There was on gender difference of male target's sexual intention perception; men rated more sexuality of female target's and self target's intention than did women. Both men and women rated brothers' and sisters' sexual intention lower than other targets'. The Implicit Association Test shown that compare to women, men were more likely to associate female and self with sex automatically, Gender differences, were not observed in associations with male and sex. Associations about brother and sister were less sexualized compared to associations about female and male, regardless of the participants' gender. In addition, there were correlations between sexual intention perceptions and individual experience, Self-Perceived Mating Success and Importance of Physical Attractiveness. In sum, this study provided evidences of gender differences in sexual intention perceptions in china and the result was consiste with Eorre Management Theory and some others'studies in this area.